Abstract

The current study investigated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-based meditation training (MMT) intervention on attentional bias, engagement and disengagement of pain-related threat in fibromyalgia patients as compared to an age-matched control group. A well validated dot-probe task was used to explore early versus later stages of attentional processing through the use of two stimulus exposure durations (100, 500 ms) of pain-related threat words. The enduring effects of MMT were assessed 6-months after completion of MMT. Preliminary results suggest that MMT reduces avoidance of pain-related threat at early levels of processing, and facilitates disengagement from threat at later stages of processing. Furthermore, it appears that effects of MMT on early attentional threat processing do not remain stable after long-term follow-up.

Asmundson, G. J., & Hadjistavropoulos, H. D. (2007). Is high fear of pain associated with attentional biases for pain-related or general threat? A categorical reanalysis.
The Journal of Pain,8(1), 11–18.
PubMed

Huijding, J. et al. (2011). To look or not to look: An eye movement study of hypervigilance during change detection in high and low spider fearful students.
Emotion,
11(3), 666–674.
PubMed

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1982). An outpatient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation: Theoretical considerations and preliminary results.
General Hospital Psychiatry,4(1), 33–47.
PubMed

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990).
Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness. New York: Delacorte.

Pessoa, L., McKenna, M., et al. (2002). Neural processing of emotional faces requires attention.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,99(17), 11458–11463.
PubMed

Roelofs, J., Peters, M. L., et al. (2005). The role of fear of movement and injury in selective attentional processing in patients with chronic low back pain: A dot-probe evaluation.
The Journal of Pain,6(5), 294–300.
PubMed